Beacon’s Call Update #1

We have a quite sizable update ready to end this weekend off with.

In terms of balance changes, we are striving to make the early game more accessible to new players, but further the challenge as you play. You’ll see some more significant changes in the next couple of updates.

Speaking about one such change, “Player spawns on coastal islands have been rebalanced so starting on small off-shore islands should no longer be possible.”, you can see what effect this has on some previously “harder” spawns here:

Spawn Change Example #1

Spawn Change Example #2

Spawn Change Example #3

The arrows show the old spawn pointing to the new one after this change.

We still have some things we want to improve and definitely more bugs to squish so stay tuned for more patches on the horizon.

Bonus Promo: If you have a spare moment, please leave us a review on Steam! This is a key metric for Steam to promote Wayward to more new/old players and helps us understand what players like/don’t like about the game so we can improve it.

Bonus Tip: Does using actions via the (right-click) action menu feel tedious? Add them to your action bar instead! Simply click on an action slot to bind an action to it. Some good starting actions to set up in each slot is “Chop”, “Mine”, “Butcher”, “Start Fire”, and “Stoke Fire”. These slots will automatically use the best tool or item for the job in your inventory.

New

  • Departing an island with a lit lighthouse on it now adds a bonus to your travel range.
  • You can now put “drop all” in an action slot to drop every item in your inventory. (Up to what fills the tile.)

Improvements

  • Removed messages, action, and item actions from the menu bar for a simplified new user experience and better compatibility for lower resolutions/higher interface scaling.
  • Improved the appearance of the crafting/dismantle dialog tabs.
  • Dialog titles now display their current keybinding.
  • Tweaked the UI for when the game is paused to hopefully make it easier to tell that the game is paused, and what to do to unpause.
  • Merchants will now never stock past 75% of their weight. (Thanks Gyuri (kustox)!)
  • Increased maximum width of tooltips on low resolutions, and reduced maximum width of tooltips on high resolutions, to result in a more consistent tooltip size overall.
  • Improved the readability of the island name/arrival text on small resolution/higher interface scaling.
  • Dialog titles now display their icons.
  • The warning when crafting with items that may break is now disabled by default for a better new player experience.
  • Improved the default column size in category/skill views in the crafting dialog when using interface scales above 1.
  • You can now dismount boats when over top of corpses.
  • Some creatures now count as a fire source when being comforted while resting/sleeping.
  • Updated some outdated areas of the help menu.
  • Older UI buttons now use the same click sound effect as newer UI buttons.

Balance

  • Player spawns on coastal islands have been rebalanced so starting on small off-shore islands should no longer be possible.
  • Standing by heat sources will now increase the chance of healing the frostbite status, but may also hurt you further if the heat source is too hot.
  • Decreased skeleton difficulty.
  • Hobgoblins, acid spitter demons, ice elementals, and dryads now have blunt damage vulnerability while increasing/adding their resistance to slashing or piercing.
  • Increased the rarity of x3/x4 thirst/hunger challenges and increased their difficulty rating in challenge mode.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed nearby items not being usable with the action bar.
  • Fixed a save corruption leading to the game not loading correctly. (Thanks mathematico!)
  • Fixed filtering not being applied to new items.
  • Potentially fixed mod bindings, actions, and other mod registrations not loading or overlapping in certain situations. (Thanks 柯箴之, Hiran, Lilac, and Umbra Animo!)
  • Fixed tattered map tiles flickering every turn.
  • Fixed “slotted in action bar” icons sometimes getting stuck on items.
  • Fixed field of view flickering in multiplayer.
  • Fixed subtitle spacing on lower interface scaling. (Thanks Heart!)
  • Fixed action bar add/remove buttons appearing far out from the rest of the action slots.
  • Fixed errors when traveling to a new island. (Thanks Torrin and wolfram!)
  • Fixed field of view/lighting-related multiplayer desyncs.
  • Fixed “Drop All” and “Drop All of Quality” actions only being slottable when operating on an exact item.
  • Fixed being able to drop things where not allowed using the “Drop Items at Feet When Facing Tile is Blocked” option.
  • Fixed the “Drop” actions not displaying a red message and preventing use when there’s something in the way.
  • Fixed “Drop All (of Quality)” not dropping the correct quality. (Thanks King Smidgens!)
  • Fixed “Drop” actions not displaying a red message and preventing use when the item(s) don’t fit in a container.
  • Fixed multiple styling issues relating to input/dropdown menus in dialogs.
  • Fixed being able to load the mods menu before all mods are initialized.
  • Fixed UI quadrant changes resetting when rejoining a server.
  • Fixed merchant/shipper container dialogs staying open after the NPC dies.
  • Fixed action slots incorrectly appearing as though they had no action bound in some cases. (Thanks Petalwing!)
  • Fixed renderer not updating correctly for other players when moving to/from caves.
  • Fixed text describing a book not using the same format as other book description text. (Thanks 柯箴之!)
  • Message conversions/upgrades now happen for all players (even disconnected ones) on the save.
  • Fixed being able to enter screenshot mode when in the pause menu.
  • Fixed pressing escape no longer exiting screenshot mode.
  • Fixed the message UI getting squished when starting a game with it in the top right quadrant.
  • Fixed dialog/container sort selection not being saved for clients in multiplayer games.
  • Fixed some issues with how native scaling is handled.
  • Fixed the crafting dialog being blank when joining a multiplayer game that is paused.
  • Fix the action bar moving to the bottom left when the messages are switched to a dialog.
  • Fixed the title bar not showing when you’re using the development branch.
  • Fixed the back button on mods overlapping text if the description was too big.
  • Fixed a few embeds in the news menu displaying as links.
  • Fixed ports in the islands dialog having an unintentional extra white line underneath them.

Technical

  • Fixed some seeded generators sharing internal state objects.

Modding

  • Improved the file generation/updating of "+mod create" and "+mod update" to hopefully result in less stumbling points for new modders.

Mods

Debug Tools

  • Fixed issues when attempting to paint tiles. (Thanks Smogginal Dorksfurth!)
  • You can now apply and remove status effects on players/NPCs.

Magicology

  • Updated item recipes to not require magical bindings.
  • Items are now created after enabling the mod on an existing save.
  • Is no longer considered a cheat mod.
  • Reduced durability/power of given items (so they aren’t as cheaty).

TARS

  • Now takes into account a creature’s difficulty/tier when deciding if it should attack or run away.
  • Fixed issues related to running away from creatures when trying to rest.
  • Fixed a game freeze when too many items are on the ground.

Balancing Tools

  • Added two new options for disabling NPC and creature attacking.

Wiki Retired

It’s been quite awhile since the wiki on the site has been frequented, and even longer since it was updated. Instead of keeping up a large, out-of-date repository that sadly will probably not get much love at all, all of it has now been archived on a non-editable page here. Thank you to all that helped out with this project back in the day! Much of the need for it was hampered by the documentation being released for the old/free version of Wayward. Now with Wayward on Steam, there’s even less of a need for the older information. Regardless of the factors, we are also planning on ways to feature more of this information in the main game instead of needing external sources.

If you ever need additional help, some good places to ask would be on our Discord, on the Steam Discussions, or in the forum. You might also be able to get your questions answered on social media via Reddit, Facebook or Twitter.

Stay tuned for more news on beta 2.3!

Spam Filtering Issues Resolved

If you have tried registering to this site, or even sending an email to contact@unlok.ca in the last little while (up to a month ago) and have not received any contact or emails back, it’s likely your registration or email was trapped in our over-aggressive spam filter.

We found out that this was happening a bit too late unfortunately and now have begun contacting everybody back. Stay tuned! We’re making our way through a backlog of non-spam emails. If you still have not heard back, please contact us (or request a new password if you registered) again.

Wayward Beta 2.0 Released!

Steam Release Banner

It’s with great pleasure that we announce the release of Wayward Beta 2.0 on Steam!

It’s been a long road (longer than we had hoped for) with many additional things we wanted to get in the game before releasing. We wanted the step from 1.9.2 to 2.0 to be significant and meaningful in comparison and we hope that we have achieved that in the minds of old and new players alike.

There’s no time for a break though! Wayward Beta 2.0 on Steam marks a new era for Wayward – one with continual and faster updates once again. There’s no plans of stopping development for Wayward, with plenty left on the todo. We hope that you come a long for the ride and never stop posting feedback!

Beta 2.0 Changelog

Special Donator Communication

Today, we have sent out a special email to all the previous Wayward donators.

I am posting this here just in case some of you have not received it. Many of the emails date back as far as 2012; I realize many of the emails may not even be active or in use any longer. If this is the case for you, please contact me as soon as possible.

contact@unlok.ca

To answer a question I get a couple times here and there: Donations for Wayward have been disabled for awhile now, and we have no plans to re-open them.

Hunger Clock, Literally Post-mortem

Hunger Clock, Literally

If you don’t already know what Hunger Clock, Literally is, or know about Ludum Dare, go here to get the scoop before reading this. But basically, I made a game in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare game making competition. Here’s my thoughts.

This weekend was pretty fun. It was my first time doing something like this. I had a lot of crazy ideas at the start, but I knew I had to play it a bit safe if I wanted to get it finished. So while, innovation was important, it took a bit of a back seat to the rest of my goals.

In the end, besides the primary goal of completing the game, I also wanted to make it fun, challenging, and rewarding – hopefully most of that shines through this relatively unpolished piece. The main personal goal for entering this competition was to force myself to learn some new things and try out some techniques to add to my arsenal of game development. I capitalized on that aspect as well. I am happy with the result for these reasons.

HTML5 is great for these kind of competitions because I had people playing and testing while I was developing all simultaneously. I think that sped up my development process a lot. I was originally going to try out Phaser, a recent HTML5 game engine, but was having a lot of issues with physics and collision. In the end, I decided to do it from scratch and the result was a lot smoother, but I definitely wasted a bit of time testing Phaser and then coding my own systems. Time which could have been spent doing some of the stuff below.

If I had more time, I would of fixed up some of these things:

Better Internet Explorer 9 & 10 Support

Foolishly, I assumed IE9/10 had nearest neighbor scaling for canvas. I was wrong!

IE Fail

More Mario!

I know I wanted to use some pretty advanced jumping physics. I got most of it in, like arcing, imprecise corner jumping, corner boosting, friction, dynamic jump heights (based on input); however, on smaller jumps the arcing isn’t noticeable or effective. I would also perhaps like to implement jumping momentum like in Super Mario Bros 1/2/3 where your jump forces you into a direction a bit more so you can’t just stop dead in air.

Music

So quiet… we need some trashy chiptune stuff going on! Sadly, my skills are quite lacking in this department.

Content

While there is a decent amount of content for a 48 hour game, I would maybe like to push that more. More power-ups, more block types and mechanics, better randomization/templating. Who knows, maybe even some real enemies?

Mobile/Touch Support

It’s an HTML5 game, right?! So, ideally, with some more time I could of added some touch controls for this to work on mobile and touch devices.

All in all though, I’m very pleased and look forward to the next Ludum Dare! Who knows, maybe I will expand on this one after all.

View Game Entry on Ludum Dare

Play The Game